Mr. Cruz, Mr. Trump and Journalistic Punditry

I read once to my surprise that in the latter months of 2015, just as Mr. Trump following Billy Graham’s son’s lead suggested stopping immigration of Moslems into the U.S. until it was known what their plans were, Virginia parents wanted to fire a school teacher for giving students an Arabic calligraphy assignment out of a government supplied textbook. Media reports of Virginia’s puzzling reaction to this Arabic public school assignment suggested that Virginia parents equated Arabic writing with the religion of Mohamed; hence, their children by writing the Arabic assignment were being indoctrinated by the Arabic Mohammedan religion whose devotees Mr. Trump and Mr. Graham’s son wanted to temporarily bar from entry into the U.S.

In a New York Times editorial dated April 1 2016, I read that in the Utah Republican primary “Mormons offended by Mr. Trump’s comments about Muslims delivered a hefty winner-take-all state to Mr. Cruz.” This quotation is almost as puzzling as the Virginia parents’ reaction to what would seem a simple government effort to improve students’ understanding of world cultures. For it suggests that Mormons in the western state of Utah favour Moslems while in the eastern state of Virginia many angry presumably Christian parents saw Moslems as the enemy. And an even more fundamentally bewildering element in this editorialist’s explanation of the Utah Republican primary is implied in the suggestion that Mormons favoured Mr. Cruz’s comments about Moslem’s To Mr. Trump’s: Mr. Trump’s wanting to temporarily stop Moslems from entering the U.S. to Mr. Cruz’s belief that Moslem neighbourhoods should be put under surveillance.